Painting & Printmaking School of Fine Art
Natalia Bocian
Natalia Bocian (born 2000) is a Polish painter, based in Glasgow in Scotland.
She graduated from architecture in 2022 with a BArch before moving on to study painting at Glasgow School of Art. In her work she focuses on depicting the world on the brink of climate collapse, where, after years of careless extraction, the earth is futile and catastrophic events, such as floods, droughts, plagues, and epidemics, have become an ordinary occurrence.
Her degree show focuses on the historical flood of 1997 that heavily affected the city she is from. The series is a personal retelling that draws directly from historical materials and the testimonies of flood survivors to reconstruct the flood as a myth. She abandons documentary realism to embrace the surreal logic of trauma and memory, thus centring the experience of the victims.
Her painting methods rely on constant experimentation as she applies multiple layers of thin washes of paint to an unprimed canvas. The paint frequently escapes the contours of her drawing, distorting and obscuring the figures. The final painting is a mediation between her intent and the free flow of the liquid.
The painting process is preceded by an extensive research into past climate disasters and their portrayal in art and media. She sees this as a valuable way of gaining information about human behaviour during an emergency. She thinks that her practice creates an opportunity for the viewers to connect to a difficult and abstract subject of Global Warming through seeing its very real consequences. Her works serve as both a literal and figurative warning, suggesting that the rising waters are not just a historical memory, but have become an ever-looming future reality as climate change progresses.
Degree Show
In July of 1997, my parents and grandparents went through a flood so terrible it was named the Millennial Flood, as the water levels surpassed any recorded in history.
I did not live through the flood, so the series is a personal retelling that sits between the historical and imagined. I draw directly from the testimonies of my family and other flood survivors to reconstruct the flood as a myth that quickly abandons documentary realism to embrace the surreal logic of trauma and memory.
The exhibition space itself becomes an extension of this artistic narrative. The walls are painted with a high-water mark—an imagined waterline that represents the idea that the exhibition itself has been flooded. Although Western art has directly participated in the progression of the Anthropocene, no space will be spared by the flood, no matter its cultural significance. Like the paintings themselves, this flood mark serves as both a literal and figurative warning, suggesting that the rising waters are not just a historical memory, but are becoming an ever-looming future reality as climate change progresses.
Last year, in June of 2024, the water levels in Poland surpassed those of 1997, ending the assumption that a flood of this magnitude was a once-in-a-millennium occurrence. What is necessary is that instead of imagining the end of the world in the future, we recognise that we are already living through the end of the world as we know it. We have officially entered the Anthropocene, as disasters force us to extend our scales and stretch our concepts of the world yet again.
I think that at this moment in history, it is crucial for Western art to make amends for centuries of direct participation in the progression of the Anthropocene. As Rachael DeLue points out, European landscape art was a crucial tool in the realisation of colonial and imperial projects, but it has the potential to escape its history and show us the world in a way that reality cannot. I try to make work that opposes the dominant narratives about climate disasters, that shows the scarred landscapes with real compassion and engagement.
